ANZ – Consumer Confidence at Royal Morgan slumped 5.2 points to 79.3 points last week. This was the biggest weekly decline in confidence since the RBA raised the cash rate to 3.35% in February 2023.
After a modest recovery following the implementation of Stage 3 tax cuts in July 2024, consumer confidence has recently fallen to its lowest level since those tax cuts.
Meanwhile, RM unemployment is going the other way: up.
In December 2025, underemployment rose by 78,000 to 1,787,000 (up 0.4% to 11.1%), while “real” unemployment in Australia increased by 41,000 to 1,669,000 (10.4% of the workforce, up 0.2%).
According to Roy Morgan, the total workforce size (which includes both employed and unemployed people) was slightly over 16 million in December, or 16,097,000, up 130,000 from the previous month and accounting for 69.2% of Australians aged 14 and above.
Mass immigration is doing its thing.
